


With bundles of flowers, we’ll wade through the hours of cold winter

by voices_in_my_head



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Pre-Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts, takes place somewhere in S6 after Sam gets his soul back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23286592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_in_my_head/pseuds/voices_in_my_head
Summary: "The sound of the sea is almost deafening. The way the waves just keep coming and crashing one after another. Sam is always surprised when it’s only the smallest stream of water that reaches his toes, getting colder by the second. From the sound of it, you’d expect that soon enough he’d be pulled to the sea, never to surface, but no, he only gets the scraps of the water.Fitting, he thinks."
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	With bundles of flowers, we’ll wade through the hours of cold winter

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I wrote this like 2 years ago for a Sastiel Christmas exchange and I'm using this quaratine time to clean my WIP folder, so here you go.
> 
> As the tags says, there is some suicidal thinking, from Sam's POV, so please be careful if you think you'll be affected by this.

_I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love_

_We are good people and we have suffered enough_

Nikita Gill – Seventy Years of Sleep #4

The sound of the sea is almost deafening. The way the waves just keep coming and crashing one after another. Sam is always surprised when it’s only the smallest stream of water that reaches his toes, getting colder by the second. From the sound of it, you’d expect that soon enough he’d be pulled to the sea, never to surface, but no, he only gets the scraps of the water.

Fitting, he thinks.

There’s a part of Sam that imagines walking into the sea and never stopping, not until he can’t feel the sand anymore under his feet. Slowly he’ll lose the strength in his arms and eventually he’ll simply stop battling against the water. It’s not the ending he envisioned, but it would be an ending.

No, that’s a lie. Suicide is a sin and he’d just be buying a one-way ticket to Hell. Not that it’s clear that if he dies by any other means he’ll go to Heaven but still, one must hope.

Sam would never do it, of course. Not because of the torture that awaits him, not when it would be so deserving for the boy who started the end of the world, but because it would break Dean and that is just… His brother spent forty years in hell. Sam knows that Dean would welcome a repeat if it meant Sam was alive and he simply will not allow that.

Living for another soul isn’t the healthiest way of living, he’s sure, but at least it is a way.

“Castiel,” Sam knows he says the name by the way his vocal cords move, but he doesn’t actually hear it. It’s just the waves over and over again.

“I hope you’re okay,” he says onto the unknown and then takes a deep breath. It’s late and dark and cold and if Sam is being honest with himself, he is too hungry and too sleepy to still be standing by the sea. Yet, he can’t force himself to leave. He just isn’t sure that when he finally gets his feet to move, they’ll go back and not forward.

Sam has promised himself that he wouldn’t go down that road, yet… It would provide an answer.

An answer. Something so simply. Something Sam craves more than anything in this world.

“Please, come,” Sam says and this time he whispers it.

Nothing happens. He sighs. Of course, why did he expect anything different? With his left foot, Sam kicks the sand at his feet.

The waves still aren’t enough to disguise the rush of wind that comes with an angel’s arrival.

Sam turns to the left, surprised. “You came,” he doesn’t remember the last time he was this shocked.

“You called,” Castiel answers, like everything is explained in those simple words, and it is unfair how it just makes Sam doubt reality even harder.

Sam turns to the ocean. Castiel walks closer until their sides are almost touching.

Castiel waits him out in silence. He is a being of millennia. Of course he’s used to waiting. Sam could stand until morning and Castiel would still never move. It’s weirdly reassuring.

“You know what I spend most of my time thinking? And imagining when I’m asleep?” Sam asks and he has to speak louder than usual to hear himself but this time he can’t just let the words die as they leave his mouth. He needs to know what is actually happening.

Sam turns to Castiel, who is already looking at him. He looks exactly like he always does. Unruly hair, bright blue eyes, surprisingly clean trench coat.

“That this is all a dream. That I’m really inside the cage and one day Lucifer is going to take it all away and show me that this… it’s just a nightmare. I’m really stuck there and I’m never leaving.”

“Sam,” Castiel starts but Sam doesn’t let him finish. Now that he’s opened his mouth to talk about the thing that he’s kept trapped inside himself for weeks, it’s just pouring out.

“He’s going to show up in the future. When the Apocalypse is just a memory and I am happy and Dean is happy… And he’s suddenly going to show up, maybe I’m on my death bed, and he’s going to say, “did you really think you deserved this life, Sam? Did you really think you were free?” and maybe he’ll start torturing me, or maybe he’s just going to make me forget and do it all over again. And in fifty years he shows up again. And he makes me forget again. And I start over again. Until I’ve lived a long, happy life for fifty years and one time he doesn’t make me forget. I’ll know that this was a lie all along and I’m down there. Trapped in the cage with Lucifer.”

Sam doesn’t so much exhale a breath as much as he just gives up on breathing air for a few seconds. But then his lungs are burning and he opens his mouth, making a sound, and inhales a much needed breath.

“Sam,” Castiel says his name again.

“I’m tired,” he says and there are tears in his eyes. He bows his head, “I want it to be over.”

“Sam, you are not in the cage.”

Sam laughs. Even to his own ears, it sounds straight out of a horror film. “That’s exactly what Lucifer would make you say if I were in the cage.”

Castiel moves so that he’s standing in front of him. He touches the points of his shoes to Sam’s, who raises his head, and even with the height difference, it’s disconcerting to have their faces that close. Not unpleasant, but… new.

They stare at each other. Sam has run out of words, and Castiel is just looking at him, like he’s searching for something. The sound of the waves is still the loudest thing; Sam can’t hear his heartbeat, even though he can feel it going faster than normal.

It doesn’t feel like an invasion of privacy at all. Sam doesn’t feel like hiding away, knowing that Castiel is seeing him for all that he is, all the ugliness inside and not just the exterior. It feels liberating not to be a liar. Castiel knows exactly what he is looking at.

Suddenly, Castiel puts one hand on either side of Sam’s face. His thumbs are just below Sam’s lips and he moves them about, massaging his skin. “You are not ugly, Sam Winchester. You are one of the most beautiful souls I have ever seen.”

Sam blinks, opens his mouth but no sound comes out. Castiel keeps on talking, “you are not in the cage. You have suffered enough,” Castiel finishes and pulls his head down. Sam has no idea what’s going to happen next, but it certainly isn’t to be kissed on the forehead by Castiel.

At least, it starts as a kiss but it quickly develops into more. It feels like a warm light goes through his whole body, up to his teeth and down to his toes.

“This is real,” Castiel murmurs against his forehead and Sam feels the words inside himself like he hasn’t felt even the cold of the beach.

Sam feels like what he imagines he would feel if he really had gone out to sea and then been saved just at the last moment, when he’d given up all hope of survival. He’d given up, but someone had reached him in time, dragged him out from under the waves and given him breath.

His breathing is coming in too fast. Sam feels undone. But also reborn.

_“You are okay,”_ is what the light inside himself is saying, or maybe it’s actually Castiel’s voice? _“You have suffered enough and you are going to be okay now.”_

“Sam,” Castiel calls his name and he no longer has his lips to Sam’s forehead, but he keeps holding onto his face and they’re still standing incredibly close together. Sam can’t remember the last time he was this close to someone. “Lucifer would not be able to create reality such as it is. Based on your memories of Dean, Bobby and other people, he could trick you into thinking they were real. But the whole world? Complete strangers? It is beyond even his imagination.

“This is real. And whenever you doubt my words, call me and I will come back to remind you.”

Sam blinks. This feels like more than he deserves.

“Why are you doing this, Cas?” Sam asks and his voice sounds like he’s eaten pieces of glass.

Sam is ready to hear once more _“because you have suffered enough”_ but instead, to his utter shock, Castiel blushes.

“I want to make you happy, Sam.”

Sam blinks. Castiel pulls his hands down and Sam feels the lack of heat immediately. Castiel also goes to move back, to create space between the two of them, but Sam is quick to catch one of his arms with a hand, stopping him in his tracks.

Sam opens his mouth but once again, words escape him. Or, more precisely, for the first time in a very long time Sam doesn’t want to say, _“I am not good enough.”_

This is an Angel of the Lord. A being of millennia. Who is Sam to try and doubt his feelings?

Castiel has seen Sam at his absolute worst and not only did he stick around, but somehow managed to see the tiniest speck of light in the darkness.

Sam continues to stare at Castiel, thoughts running in his head. He is thankful to Castiel in the sort of way that he’s thankful to Dean for how he raised him: the type of way where you know that not only can you never repay them, but they wouldn’t want it even if you could.

“Thank you,” he says. It doesn’t seem adequate at all. Not from just this, but from everything that Castiel has gone through for them. But it’s all Sam has.

Castiel smiles and for the first time in a very long time, it feels like enough. Being here, on a beach in a small town, where the biggest issue is a ghost, and with Castiel. Sam lowers his head until his forehead touches Castiel’s. He exhales loudly and hears Castiel do the same. The warm air hits his face.

He feels calm. Peaceful. And like everything is going to be alright.

Still with his eyes closed, Sam says, “I would like that” and Castiel’s breath quickens just for a few seconds and Sam remembers the mental list he started composing once he found out angels were real, and how he had so many questions about them, and it used to be things such as, “how old are they?” “what can kill them?” and “how can they be helpful?”

But now, opening his eyes to Castiel’s look of wonder and happiness and shy smile, all Sam thinks is “how can I keep making this happen?”

Sam straightens out, moving the hand still holding Castiel in place, down, touching Castiel’s hand, who is quick to intertwine their fingers.

The waves keep on coming in front of him, but this time Sam isn’t hearing a call to go to them. Instead, it’s like they’re trying to keep him at bay, saying “go, be free, leave” and Sam decides to do exactly that.

So he pulls onto Castiel’s hand and they start walking away from the sea. It’s beautiful and Sam could keep staring at it forever, but he decides that he’s had quite enough of it for the night. He’d much rather study Castiel instead.


End file.
